The enormous vaccination program against the A/H1N1 swine flu virus due to start this autumn across Germany is nothing less than a huge experiment, a prominent critic of the pharmaceutical industry says.
Dr. Wolfgang Becker-Brueser, publisher of a magazine which details critiques of the pharmaceutical industry, says current safety testing rules allow for up to a quarter of a million people to have serious reaction against the vaccine, he told ZDF.
Conditions set out for the vaccine, which is still being developed, to be licensed for use, are particularly lax, he alleges.
Only those reactions which occur "frequently", meaning at least once in each 100 test patients, would be noted and considered serious, says Becker-Brueser.
This means that if the target of 25 million Germans being vaccinated is met, nearly 250,000 could have a serious reaction against the vaccine.
His warning comes as a report was released showing that half of children in England who have been given the current flu drug Tami flu, used to keep the A/H1N1 flu at bay, have suffered side-effects such as nausea, insomnia and nightmares.
Others are also having second thoughts about the wisdom of injecting as much as a third of the population with a brand new vaccine.
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written by david salins, September 23, 2009
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